At Counterpunch, Michael Hudson has penned an important article that outlines the important connections between US foreign policy, oil, and the US dollar.
In short, US foreign policy is geared very much toward controlling oil resources as part of a larger strategy to prop up the US dollar. Hudson writes:
Oil prices surged Tuesday night following the Iranian government’s missile attack launched in response to the US’s killing of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani and Iraqi militia commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis.
According to CNBC, US West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures surged 4.5 percent, or $2.83, to $65.53, their highest level since April.
Abstract: Rules and rule-following are becoming better understood as decision-making and coordination mechanisms. Further, that hierarchy is an under-appreciated element of natural spontaneous, rule-based, orders has caused confusion. The article argues firstly that the ability to meld rule-following and hierarchy in one theory of the firm presents an opportunity for a possible consistent Austrian theory of the firm.
In 2006, I asked whether or not Ken Lay really was a criminal following his conviction in federal court for crimes allegedly committed while he was the CEO of ill-fated Enron. My conclusion that he had not committed real crimes did not exactly resonate with some readers and certainly not with the media at large.
Deriding Chile for its economic inequality is fashionable among detractors of its economic model. Chile’s economic success during the forty years has not been enough for its loudest critics. Looking for whatever hole they can find, they frequently cite Chile’s inequality as a sign of concern.
One of the fundamental questions in development economics is how an economy grows. As the reader may know, an economy grows by means of economic freedom, which implies property rights and the emergence of markets and exchange ratios (prices). Further, such chains of events bring about economic calculation. However, are such conditions enough for economic development? That is, does a nation need only property rights to develop?
The view that more money can revive an economy is based on the belief that money transmits its stimulatory effect through aggregate expenditure. With more money in their pockets, people will be able to spend more and the rest will follow suit. Money, in this way of thinking, is a means of payment and funding.
Abstract: I show evidence of Austrian boom-bust dynamics in historical data on the production structure of 28 developed economies. I employ an autoregressive distributed lag model to find that policy-induced deviations from the natural rate of interest increases roundaboutness. This could instigate an unsustainable boom. Additionally, I find that early-stage industries have higher cyclical sensitivity than late-stage industries, consistent with Austrian time-value dynamics in the structure of production.
